How ‘Toy Story 2’ Almost Didn’t Get Made And Created A Rift Between Pixar And Disney

After the initial success of Toy Story, the Pixar lead creative team began work on their second film, A Bug’s Life. At the same time, Disney wanted a follow-up on Toy Story to build on the success of the original. The only problem was that Toy Story‘s lead creative team (director John Lasseter, writer Andrew Stanton, editor Lee Unkrich, and head of story Joe Ranft) were working on another film, so a secondary team — one that had never led a film before — would have to be formed to work on Toy Story 2.

President of Pixar Animation, Ed Catmull, thought this wouldn’t be a problem because Toy Story‘s lead team never headed a film before, either. Because of this, Disney — which was co-financing Pixar’s films as part of a three-picture deal — urged Pixar to make the film “direct-to-video” to help lower costs, but Pixar thought…